- 2 days ago
After the search for a missing Florida couple leads to a chilling discovery in their garage, detectives follow the money trail to a surprising false identity that unlocks a deadly interstate scheme.
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00:12The
00:13Neighbors on Singer Island and family members reported that this couple was missing.
00:19They have been missing for over a week and I started getting very worried about them.
00:26Where have they gone? They didn't tell anybody.
00:28Their absence made no sense.
00:30When the wife is missing and the husband's missing, you don't know if one of them killed the other.
00:37One of the brothers opened the freezer and he let out a primal scream.
00:42Much to his horror, he saw a frozen body.
00:47What kind of person can do something like that?
00:50All along, the suspect was planning to commit murder.
00:54Talking to witnesses, two people went out fishing.
00:57The boat came back. Just one person gets off the boat.
01:01We knew that we had the murderer completely circled and surrounded.
01:07It wasn't a heat of the moment. It wasn't a passion killing.
01:12He had premeditated and planned this whole thing out.
01:33The Singer Island of 1998 was very quaint.
01:37The homes were built close together. Most of them are on the water.
01:42It was always a safe community.
01:46And it was very rare that there was any crime on Singer Island.
01:58My boss called me and said,
02:00Hey Greg, I want you to work this case.
02:01There's something that's not quite right.
02:04I got to the house. There was a lot of police activity.
02:07And there were civilians going in and out of the house.
02:10But there was no crime scene tape.
02:12We learned that the Riviera Beach Police Department was there to do a welfare check.
02:17Because family members told the police that this couple was missing.
02:21Jeanette Pirro and Chris Benedetto, they should be here.
02:24We haven't seen them for five days.
02:26They were all genuinely concerned and wanted the police to check in with them.
02:34So the police go in the house. Nothing is out of place.
02:38There's no sign of a burglary or struggle or anything.
02:42But they do notice things that should be with a couple if they're on a trip.
02:47Like Chris's medications are still there.
02:49Chris's wallet's there. Chris's cell phone's there.
02:52Interviewing the neighbors.
02:53The police just knew it was completely out of character for Chris and Jeanette to just disappear when nobody would
02:58know where they were.
03:00Then the neighbors told law enforcement detailed accounts and the reason why they were concerned about Chris and Jeanette.
03:10No one's heard a word from either one of them.
03:13It was very unnerving.
03:16And there was an overwhelmed feeling of what could have happened.
03:24Five days before this, on Wednesday, November 11th, Chris and Jeanette had plans to meet up with their neighbors and
03:33have dinner.
03:34But Chris and Jeanette never showed up.
03:38Then, over the next couple days, neighbors start to notice mail's not been taken out of the mailbox.
03:45Also, Chris's forerunner's not at the house.
03:47It should be there.
03:48Because for Chris and Jeanette to just get up and leave and not have called somebody to say,
03:52Hey, we're going out of town for a couple days.
03:54That's just not them.
03:57I called Chris and Jeanette's home.
04:01There was no answer.
04:03It wasn't normal.
04:05And I started getting very, very worried about them.
04:09Their absence made no sense to any of the neighbors.
04:13Something is amiss.
04:15Where is Chris Benedetto?
04:17Where is Jeanette Pirro?
04:22It's been four days.
04:23And the neighbors start reaching out to relatives to see if they have any information.
04:29They have a number for Jeanette Pirro's sister, Regina Koblen, married to Michael Koblen, or Big Mike.
04:37The neighbors called up to Brick, New Jersey Sunday evening,
04:43informed Regina that Chris and Jeanette had not been seen for four days.
04:50But Regina Koblen had no idea where they were.
04:57Next, the neighbors called the Benedetto family.
05:00Chris Benedetto's brothers, Paul and George Benedetto,
05:04who were police officers in the state of New York,
05:06began to mobilize and make plans to try to come down to Florida a few days later
05:12to initiate a search for Chris Benedetto and Jeanette Pirro.
05:19The next day, Monday morning, is when the family called law enforcement,
05:24and they went out and did the welfare check,
05:26and the bolo is issued for Chris Benedetto's vehicle, the Toyota 4Runner.
05:33Chris's brothers can't get out of work for another day.
05:38So Mike Koblen is married to Jeanette's sister,
05:41travels down to Florida the next day.
05:44Mike would come down and fish with Chris all the time.
05:47They were friends.
05:49He has keys, so he ends up staying at Chris and Jeanette's house after he gets here.
05:55Big Mike, an avid fisherman, knew the area,
05:59and spent a lot of time that day visiting local Singer Island marinas
06:02and asking questions about whether or not anyone had seen Chris and Jeanette.
06:08And in talking to someone at the Sailfish Marina,
06:11Mike Koblen learned that Chris and Jeanette had gone to the Bahamas
06:15with another couple on their boat.
06:18He shares that information with the neighbors
06:20and then Chris's brothers in New York.
06:24When I heard that Chris and Jeanette went to the Bahamas
06:27with some friends during hurricane season,
06:30and they left without telling anybody,
06:33I felt that couldn't be true.
06:36Chris and Jeanette wouldn't do that.
06:38So I knew that story was bogus.
06:42Chris and Jeanette always made meticulous plans,
06:45but this time they didn't tell anybody.
06:48So the neighbors and Chris's brothers had real doubts
06:52and thought Big Mike was given bad information
06:55with regard to a fishing trip to the Bahamas.
07:00Chris's brothers, they just know something's not right.
07:04They're not sure what.
07:05So they do what good police do.
07:09The next day, Chris's brothers, Paul and George Benedetto,
07:15flew down to Florida to Canva, Singer Island with Michael Koblen.
07:20They get missing posters printed up.
07:23They are going around to businesses.
07:25They are talking to people.
07:27Being in law enforcement,
07:29they were confident that they can find Chris and Jeanette.
07:33That night, Paul and George slept in the Benedetto house.
07:37But there wasn't enough room at the house.
07:40So Michael Koblen stayed on his friend's fishing yacht at a marina.
07:50The Benedetto brothers hadn't had any luck.
07:54So the next day, they formally filed a missing persons report.
07:58The Revere Beach police then put on the local news
08:01that this couple was missing.
08:04Chris's brothers and the brother-in-law were all working together,
08:08trying to get anyone that knew anything about this case to come forward.
08:14As time went on and Chris and Jeanette were still missing,
08:17I was worried for them because they were friends of mine.
08:21And nobody knows what happened.
08:26At this point, Chris and Jeanette have been missing for 11 days.
08:30No one has seen or heard from them.
08:32And the police don't have any investigative leads.
08:37But then a break in the case occurred.
08:40A valet at the embassy suites in Singer Island contacted law enforcement
08:45that there was a vehicle that might be related to the missing persons report
08:48that was in the news.
08:50A deputy responded to the scene.
08:53And in fact, it was Chris Benedetto's truck.
08:58It was seized and taken to a different location.
09:02So that obviously raised some questions.
09:05Who drove it there?
09:07Is this the last place?
09:08Someone may have seen Chris and Jeanette.
09:10Or how long has it been there?
09:12If something happened to Chris and Jeanette,
09:14if it happened in the car,
09:15there should be some sort of evidence in the car.
09:18But the car was like the house.
09:20There was nothing discovered from it.
09:24At that time, the Benedetto brothers concluded that their efforts
09:28to find their brother and Jeanette Pirro were unsuccessful.
09:33They decided to tidy up and secure the house
09:36and go back to New York the next day
09:38and let law enforcement in South Florida take over.
09:47So the next morning, while turning the electricity off,
09:52the Benedetto brothers discovered there was a bait freezer
09:55wedged underneath a workbench in the garage
09:58to avoid the smell of rotting and thawing bait fish.
10:04And they planned to empty out the fish that were in there.
10:09So one of the Benedetto brothers opened it,
10:14and he let out a primal screen of shock and horror.
10:22Instead of seeing frozen fish,
10:25he saw, much to his horror, a frozen body.
10:31The police were wondering, had the husband killed his wife?
10:34Was it a stranger? Who could have done this?
10:38The 4.03-carat princess-cut diamond ring.
10:43She wore it all the time.
10:45What happened to the ring?
10:47It was not recovered in the house.
10:50It was not recovered at autopsy.
10:52So now we have evidence he was in the house the day that she was killed.
10:56He took that ring either against her will or off a dead body.
11:13The Benedetto brothers decide to unpack the bait freezer in the garage.
11:19Paul Benedetto opened the freezer, expecting to see frozen bait fish.
11:26Instead, he was horrified to see a frozen human corpse,
11:33which he believed was his sister-in-law, Jeanette Pirro.
11:43Up until that freezer was open, this was being viewed as a missing persons case,
11:48because there had been no indication a crime had occurred.
11:52Once the body is discovered, now you have a homicide investigation.
12:00All of a sudden the police come out, the crime scene tape goes up.
12:04Then you have newspaper reporters and you have television reporters to cover the case.
12:09Now forensics technicians go into process the house,
12:12because the entire house becomes a crime scene.
12:16Investigators went over the house with a fine tooth comb, looking for evidence.
12:21I arrive at the scene and the freezer is open.
12:25I just can't imagine what it took to put her in there and literally shove her body in that position.
12:35It's just so degrading.
12:40The body, it was frozen into the freezer.
12:44There was no way that she could be physically removed from the freezer without losing evidence.
12:51The police had come out with a van and they actually took the entire bait freezer out of the garage.
12:59The medical examiner performs the autopsy.
13:03The body was identified as Jeanette Pirro.
13:07The significance in those findings with Jeanette was the ligature marks around the neck.
13:14You could clearly see the striations of a braided rope around her neck.
13:23The medical examiner determined that Jeanette Pirro's cause of death was manual strangulation.
13:31To me it wasn't a random crime, it was a personal crime.
13:35You know, the person's behind you and ripping down on this rope.
13:40And we have noticed that there's no scraping on the nails.
13:44So it was somebody she knew, somebody that she was comfortable with.
13:49Because they were able to get up close and personal, get control of her that fast before she could defend
13:54herself.
14:00I was watching the news and I learned that they found Jeanette Pirro's body in a bathed freezer in the
14:08garage.
14:08I was shocked.
14:11I was upset.
14:13And then my wife was crying.
14:16Her and Jeanette were close.
14:18We were devastated.
14:19What kind of person could do something like that?
14:24Many crime scenes are replete with fingerprints, DNA, blood.
14:32But this particular crime scene was very, very difficult.
14:37Because there was no physical evidence.
14:40It was pristine.
14:42On top of that, there was no sign of Chris in the house.
14:48Chris had been missing for 11 days.
14:51And there's no indication where he is or what he's doing.
14:55In any type of domestic situation, if one of the spouses ends up dead, a surviving spouse is always an
15:06initial suspect.
15:07With regard to Chris, this case was no different.
15:10You need to sit down and take additional statements about Chris and Jeanette from the brothers, friends, and the neighbors.
15:22Through that interview, we learned that Chris and Jeanette met on a blind date in New York.
15:27And as it's been explained, love at first sight.
15:32Chris was deeply in love with Jeanette, and he bought an outlandish four-carat princess-cut diamond ring for her.
15:43And she wore it all the time.
15:47Jeanette Perrault was a very remarkable woman.
15:51She was kind. She was thoughtful.
15:54She was very compassionate.
15:57And she had an eye for beauty.
16:00Jeanette was a statuesque, graceful, elegant interior designer, life of the party.
16:10Chris Benedetto was a gregarious, former construction worker who came from a huge family up in New York City.
16:20Five brothers, two sisters, all of them very, very close.
16:26Chris suffered a significant accident.
16:30He had fallen from scaffolding, and it broke his back.
16:34He had to have surgery on his back.
16:36Three or four rods ended up being placed to keep it together.
16:40A settlement that came out of the accident was over a million dollars.
16:45That led to Chris and Jeanette coming to Singer Island and purchasing the house and a boat.
16:52Changing their lifestyle because of the injury.
16:55Chris, when he retired down here, he fished most days.
16:59He had a 23-foot open fisherman boat center console.
17:04Chris and Jeanette lived on a street called Dolphin that wasn't on the water.
17:10So they kept their boat at our house, at my dock.
17:15They were a wonderful couple.
17:19Every day they went fishing, they would leave fish in the cooler for me.
17:24And Chris and Jeanette would sit with us and have a beer together.
17:29They let us socialize.
17:31They were just very happy, energetic people.
17:39Everything you're hearing from the family and from the neighbors about their relationship,
17:44nothing makes sense that Chris did this because everybody knew they were in love with one another.
17:49But then again, given the fact that Chris is missing, strangulation is an up-close and personal crime.
17:56As an investigator, to do my job correctly, I've got to look at Chris and say,
18:04what if?
18:05What if?
18:15Once Jeanette Pirro's body was discovered,
18:18there was then some questions in the minds of detectives.
18:22Where is Chris Benedetto?
18:24Could Chris have done this?
18:28We very quickly developed a complete financial picture on Christopher Benedetto.
18:34He didn't have any really outstanding debts that were owed to other parties.
18:39No large withdrawals from ATMs, no activity on the credit cards, no activities on any of the bank accounts.
18:47That's very unusual in this day and age.
18:50His financial existence seemed to have stopped on Wednesday, November 11, 1998.
18:59Chris is missing, and he's not accessed any of the money available to him to support himself.
19:06So that obviously raised concern.
19:10Because one, he's going to need the money to live.
19:12Two, he's going to need money for his medications.
19:14And no activity has taken place to indicate any of that's going on.
19:19So to us, looking at it, Chris wasn't responsible for Jeanette's murder.
19:26And at this point, you have to presume that Chris is a victim himself.
19:39Chris and Jeanette were my friends.
19:42I just couldn't put the pieces together.
19:44What could have happened?
19:45But after the news, it dawned on me that I had some information to divulge to the police about this
19:53situation.
19:54Thinking back to November 11, I could have been the last person that heard Chris's voice the day he went
20:01missing.
20:07On November 11, around 8 a.m., I heard a vehicle pull up and park where Chris usually parked.
20:16And then I heard Chris say, grab the rods.
20:24Then I heard the boat warming up out there at the dock.
20:27And then the boat left.
20:31Around 11 a.m., I'm in the backyard, and Chris's boat came back.
20:37It docked.
20:39And then I noticed Chris wasn't on the boat.
20:42And there was someone else on the boat, a heavyset man, over six foot, probably over 200 pounds, that I'd
20:49never seen before.
20:52Thinking back to that day, that was very peculiar.
20:55So I called the Riviera Beach Police Department.
20:59The man averted his eyes whenever Ben looked over, and he got off the boat and briskly walked to Chris's
21:08truck, got in the vehicle, and drove away.
21:12Ben Demonstranti described him as a swarthy, stocky, big-bellied person, way over six foot.
21:21That description could be any of the Benedetto brothers or the brother-in-law, Michael Koblen.
21:28And strangulation is very personal.
21:30So law enforcement wanted to eliminate any of them as their potential suspect.
21:37The detectives asked me if they could bring someone back, and I could ID them, if that was the person
21:43I saw that day.
21:45And I said, absolutely.
21:47Detectives then processed the boat at my dock.
21:52They were doing forensic work, and then I noticed in the front hatch and the bow, there was no anchor
21:58line, and there was no anchor.
22:00And I mentioned to the police officers, Chris would never not have an anchor on this boat.
22:09After we'd searched the boat, there was nothing indicative that a crime took place on the boat.
22:14Everything was clean.
22:16Yes, you got rope missing, you got an anchor missing, but nothing else.
22:19So very frustrating.
22:21The Riviera Beach Police Department then conduct what we informally call a show-up, because the Ben Odetto brothers and
22:29Koblen were big guys.
22:31So they wanted to see if Ben Demonstrani saw one of them on the boat.
22:38A couple hours later, a police car pulled up.
22:42I was standing out front, and three people got out of the back seat.
22:46Two I've never seen before in my life.
22:48The third was the heavyset gentleman I saw on the boat that day.
22:56He looked at me, and he gave me the bone-chilling, most frightening look I've ever seen in my life.
23:06It just sent shivers up my spine.
23:20Three people got out of the back seat of the detective's vehicle.
23:24The first two gentlemen, I didn't know who they were at that time.
23:27The third was the man that I saw come in on the boat that day without Chris.
23:35I'm 100% sure of it.
23:38Demonstrani immediately said, that's the guy.
23:41It was Jeanette Pirro's brother-in-law, Michael Koblen.
23:51Mike Koblen's been identified as the last person seen on the boat on November 11th.
23:56And Chris didn't get off it.
23:58Chris's brothers introduced themselves to me, and I said, that person that I ID'd, he either knows what happened to
24:08Chris, or he did something to Chris.
24:12The Benedetto brothers could not fathom that Michael Koblen could have been the murderer, because their families were so intertwined
24:21and close.
24:23Mike is married to Jeanette's sister.
24:25Mike would come down and fish with Chris all the time.
24:29Now you're like, okay, why?
24:33Michael Koblen was interviewed by the Riviera Beach Police Department.
24:37But Koblen immediately said he wanted a lawyer, flew back to New Jersey, and never submitted to another interview.
24:45And now investigators think that he is the suspect in the murder of Jeanette Pirro.
24:53At this point, we need an assist on the federal side, the resources of the FBI, because of the interstate
25:01nature of the investigation.
25:02And we start to subpoena all financial records related to Mike Koblen to see what it might develop to us.
25:15Once we got Koblen's financial records, we discovered that Chris had lent over $150,000 to Michael Koblen for his
25:26trucking business in New Jersey.
25:31Next, we sat down with the Benedetto family from New York to see if they had any knowledge about the
25:37extent of the loan.
25:38The Benedetto family reported information that Chris had invested in Michael's business.
25:44But Koblen's trucking business was not doing well.
25:48And he had filed a case in bankruptcy court and only paid back about $50,000.
25:55But there was still around $100,000 that Chris Benedetto was still owed.
26:04Did it come to a head? Did Chris say, you haven't paid me any of my money back? I need
26:08the money.
26:09Koblen, the last person that was seen on the boat with Chris, hasn't repaid it alone.
26:15I think at this point, it's like, Mike Koblen's our guy.
26:20Koblen became our prime suspect, but we still had to find enough evidence to make an arrest, proof beyond a
26:27reasonable doubt.
26:28So the FBI subpoenas, conditional financial records, travel records, credit card records, and phone records related to Mike Koblen.
26:38The FBI has a particular expertise in interstate cases, but the process moves very slowly.
26:49You have to issue one subpoena, wait for the response, analyze the records, decide what additional leads are going to
26:58be developed, then issue another subpoena.
27:01It's like building a house out of bricks, one brick at a time.
27:09We finally do get the American Express account that we subpoenaed for Mike Koblen.
27:14The American Express records revealed that Michael Koblen had opened multiple subaccounts for his trucking business to the name of
27:24Michael Koblen, Regina Koblen, his wife.
27:27But there was also a Mike Carey, K-E-R-R-Y.
27:35Now, interestingly enough, there was only one charge on the American Express account of Mike Carey, and that was a
27:45plane ticket from Newark, New Jersey, to West Palm Beach, Florida, the day before Chris and Jeanette disappeared with a
27:54return flight on the 12th.
28:01Now we've got to figure out who that person is.
28:05Is he a potential suspect, potential witness, or is he not involved in the case?
28:09We do an exhaustive search of Mike Carey's in the continental United States, and none of Mike Carey's spoke to
28:17New Koblen or had ever lived in New Jersey or had ever worked for the trucking company.
28:22We've also done subpoenas for phone calls going into Koblen's residence in New Jersey.
28:29So we come across telephone calls to the Koblen residence from Singer Island on November 11th, the day Chris and
28:39Jeanette disappeared.
28:42Those telephone records from Koblen's home showed a phone number associated with the Rutledge Inn, an old-fashioned motel across
28:51the street from Chris Benedetto's subdivision on Singer Island, and just a few blocks from where Chris's truck was found
28:58in the Embassy Suites parking lot.
29:02So the investigators went to the Rutledge Inn and asked, do you have guest registration records?
29:07They sent them to an old dusty room where they had boxes and boxes of records lasting decades.
29:14We sat down and went through box by box, registration by registration.
29:20Three hours later, we discovered a registration card in the name of Mike Carey that was at the hotel on
29:29November 10th and had checked out on November 12th.
29:35That puts Mike Carey on Singer Island.
29:38The last day, Chris and Jeanette were seen alive.
29:42Now, when you check into a hotel, old school, you'd have to sign a guest registration card and to write
29:49where you lived.
29:51And where did he list his home?
29:54The same location in Brick, New Jersey, where Michael Koblen lived.
29:59Does that mean that Mike Carey was Michael Koblen?
30:12Now we've got Mike Carey using Mike Koblen's home address on a registration card for the Rutledge Inn.
30:19That doesn't make sense to us.
30:24Now we had to prove that Mike Carey was Michael Koblen.
30:31This is where old-fashioned gumshoe detective work comes into play.
30:40Arrangements are made through the FBI in New York to bring Michael Koblen in to have him complete handwriting exemplars.
30:49Handwriting exemplars are pages and pages of your own handwriting written down at the direction of an agent.
30:56So an agent would say, write a series of names, John Smith, Billy Bob.
31:03In the middle of the list of names, the FBI agent inserted Mike Carey.
31:11Agents then provided that card to the FBI National Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.
31:20They analyzed the handwriting and determined that the person who wrote Mike Carey on the Rutledge Inn registration card on
31:30the afternoon of November 10, 1998 was, in fact, Michael Koblen.
31:40So, we circumstantially had him present on Singer Island during the time of the murder.
31:51Also, the Rutledge Inn noted that the first call for Mike Carey to reserve a room was made in October,
32:01a month before the murders.
32:04So, he'd been lying about everything.
32:08All along, it was Michael Koblen who was planning to travel to Florida under that alias to murder Chris and
32:14Jeanette.
32:17I believe Mike Coblen couldn't repay the loan, so he decided he had to kill Chris and Jeanette.
32:23You see the stuff in the credit cards.
32:25You see the phone calls, the travel under the alias.
32:29It wasn't a passion killing.
32:32It wasn't a heat-of-the-moment killing.
32:34This was planned.
32:44In early October, Michael Koblen buys a plane ticket and makes a hotel reservation under an alias, Mike Carey.
32:52On November 10, Koblen flies down to West Palm Beach from Newark, New Jersey, and checks into the Rutledge Inn
32:58under his alias.
33:00On November 11, Koblen went fishing with Chris.
33:04Once on the water, I believe Koblen somehow incapacitates Chris, wraps the anchor line around Chris's body, and dumps it
33:14overboard into the Gulf Stream.
33:18Then Koblen returns to Singer Island, to the dock at my house.
33:23Koblen then drove Chris's Toyota 4Runner away from Demonstrani's house, back to Chris and Jeanette's home.
33:31Koblen enters the home, strangles Jeanette with rope from the boat, and puts her nude body in the big freezer.
33:39Then Koblen drove away in the Toyota 4Runner, and leaves it at the Embassy Suites, and walks through the Rutledge
33:46Inn.
33:47The next morning, Koblen checks out of the Rutledge Inn, takes a cab to the airport, and flies back to
33:53New Jersey, all under his alias.
34:00But this case was difficult.
34:03There was no physical evidence for Jeanette's murder.
34:09No crime scene for Chris's murder.
34:12And we had no body.
34:15So how do we prove to a jury that Koblen had committed the murders?
34:21We've got to start retracing everything again, review the work we developed, and see if you miss anything.
34:31During the crime scene search of Chris and Jeanette's house, we found a video that Chris and Jeanette made for
34:38insurance reasons.
34:40Two pen fifties, and approximately seven spin reels.
34:46They documented jewelry, Chris's fishing equipment, anything that they would potentially make an insurance claim for them.
34:55This is our BMW, my bicycle.
35:01Jeanette was wearing her engagement ring, the last she was seen by anybody.
35:06But Jeanette's ring was not recovered in the house, was not recovered at autopsy.
35:11It was the only item we could definitely say was missing from inside Chris and Jeanette's house.
35:17The original appraisal for Jeanette's four-carat princess-cut diamond ring was for $58,000.
35:26After what we had learned from Koblen's finances, we believed the ring was stolen by Koblen.
35:34And the linchpin, in this case, was what happened to the ring.
35:42We know that on November 17th, when Chris and Jeanette were missing, Koblen stayed on the fishing yacht, named Absolutely.
35:51So we decided to secure subpoenas for phone calls from the Absolutely, hoping to develop an investigative lead.
36:00The night Koblen stayed on the Absolutely.
36:02The phone records showed that Michael Koblen was telephoning De Angelis Jewelers in New York City.
36:11So we subpoenaed the owner of De Angelis Jewelers, Larry Hoffman.
36:18The story that he told was that he received a phone call from Michael Koblen,
36:23and he wanted to know if Larry Hoffman could sell some jewelry for him.
36:30Several days later, up in New York City, Larry Hoffman said that Koblen brought a four-carat ring to him,
36:38and that he paid Koblen approximately $25,000,
36:42and that he, Hoffman, reduced it into a number of smaller diamonds
36:46and then sold it in the course of his regular business.
36:49Once we got that story, we decided that we needed to bait the trap
36:54and pull in the big fish, Mike Koblen.
36:59So the investigative team convinced Hoffman that he would contact Michael Koblen
37:05and tell him that he, Hoffman, had received a subpoena to come testify
37:10in front of a Florida grand jury and see how Michael Koblen would react.
37:18Hoffman made the phone call.
37:20The FBI then had Larry Hoffman wired.
37:24And sure enough, a few days later, Hoffman received a visitor in the form of Michael Koblen.
37:31What if they, what if they asked about the, uh, the pieces?
37:36As far as I understand, you never, you never saw them.
37:39Okay.
37:40Because all I would do would definitely show me under the bus.
37:44Exactly.
37:47When we heard those final words out of Koblen's mouth,
37:51we knew that for him, it was game over.
37:54Michael Koblen was admitting he sold Jeanette's reign.
37:59And he took that reign either against Jeanette's will or off a dead body.
38:05That's not the case.
38:18What if they, what if they asked about the, uh, the pieces?
38:21Or are you right?
38:22You never, you never saw them again.
38:24The day we heard that recording from Hoffman's jewelry store,
38:29We knew that we had Michael Koblen completely circled and surrounded.
38:38Jeanette was wearing her engagement ring, the last she was seen by anybody.
38:43So now we have evidence Mike Koblen had been in the house the day Jeanette was killed.
38:53So at that point, our investigation was over, and now it was time to bring Michael Koblen to justice.
39:04Finally, in June of 2003, in Brooklyn, New Jersey, we affected the rest of Michael Koblen for killing Chris and
39:13Jeanette.
39:19As you read the police report, you realize that Mike Koblen had premeditated and planned this whole thing out.
39:27The fact that money had been loaned to Mike Koblen by Chris Benedetto and Jeanette Pirro, the fact that he
39:33had used an alias.
39:35He seemed to be someone who was desperate to survive, and he felt like the only way that he could
39:42accomplish his goal was by killing his relatives.
39:46Our theory is that after he had killed Chris Benedetto, Michael Koblen knew there was only one person that knew
39:54he was in Florida, and that was Jeanette Pirro.
39:56And he had to eliminate her as a witness, so, because it was a federal case, the West Palm Beach
40:03grand jury charged Michael Koblen with two counts of murder, one count of murdering a federal witness, and one count
40:13of interstate stalking a federal witness.
40:20The trial begins, the entire Benedetto family attended, and they sat right behind the prosecution table.
40:29We felt a huge burden on us to not lose.
40:35It was palpable pressure.
40:44The prosecution paint the picture for the jury of the scheme that Mike Koblen came up with.
40:50Despite Koblen's effort to meticulously plan everything ahead of time, the one thing he didn't plan on was Ben Demonstrani
40:59being at home in his backyard when he brought the boat back.
41:03Plan destroyed.
41:07The federal prosecutor, they asked me to identify any person in the courtroom that I saw come back that day
41:16on Chris Benedetto's boat.
41:19I took a deep breath, and I looked right at Mr. Koblen.
41:24Prosecutors asked him, how sure are you?
41:27And Demonstrani immediately responded, I'd bet my life on it.
41:38The jury has reached a verdict.
41:41Guilty.
41:45Chris and Jeanette got the justice they deserve.
41:49We proved the magnitude and the enormity of his plan.
41:54And Koblen was sentenced to two consecutive life in prison terms.
42:11A little time after the trial, I paid for the memorial bench in honor of Chris and Jeanette, and I
42:18put their names on it.
42:20It was right there on the ocean, a beautiful place.
42:23Every time I walk by their bench, I tell Chris and Jeanette that I miss them.
42:30For the trial, we got a little bit that I don't know.
42:30That I want to countess thejuice of the line.
42:30There are no plans yet.
42:30I'm not dead.
42:31I'm not dead.
42:43I'm not dead.
42:45I'm not dead.
42:47I'm dead.
42:47I'm dead.
42:48I'm dead.
42:48You
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